IB Woman
Issue No. 19 - October/November 2004
Wine and Women
Jan Siemelink-Allen, Chanda Rice and Louisa Rose
Three very different women have chosen inter-related areas of the same industry in which to indulge their passion for wine. Considering women have only been more visibly involved in all levels of the wine industry for a relatively short time, Jan Siemelink-Allen and Chanda Rice are members of a trail-blazing breed that started in the industry about 20 years ago. Louisa Rose has been involved for only 12 years but her childhood was spent helping on the family vineyard in the Yarra Valley. For these women, they dance to the same song – just a different beat.
Louisa Rose is a senior winemaker with Yalumba responsible for Yalumba white wines and the Pewsey Vale Vineyard wines. A focus for her talents is the developmental work with the Viognier grape variety.
"After graduating from the University of Melbourne with a Science degree I studied winemaking at Roseworthy, graduating dux in 1992," she says. "As a child we’d spend the weekends on our family holding in the Yarra Valley so I have a good overall picture of the industry."
Jan Siemelink-Allen was, until very recently, the State Manager for Icon Brands, a division of McGuigan Simeon Wines, and she has a vineyard that recently supplied grapes for the 2004 Jimmy Watson Trophy winner. Having been heavily involved in the wine industry for over 20 years, Jan now is concentrating on her role as Managing Director of Celad’or Pty Ltd. This will involve Jan in promoting her label, Barristers Block, and educating the Asian market in Australian wines. Growing up in the South-East of South Australia, Jan has an affinity with the land that started to crystallise when she began working with Doug Balnaves at Hungerford Hill Wines in the early 1980’s.
"There was definitely a challenge at that time for women who wanted to be involved with the wine industry," she says, "and it was hard to be taken seriously if you wanted to doing anything but cellar door sales."
Chanda Rice agrees: "I started i...
